Full Disclosure

For starters, allow me to make full disclosure.

On Monday I sold puts on shares of Groupon as a reflection of a short term bullish sentiment on its shares.

Unless you've been living in a cave or have been on an South Pole expedition you know that Groupon is that beleaguered daily deal space leader that has had a rough time of things.

If either of those are the case, you probably also still own shares of Research in Motion.

Sometimes you are your own worst enemy and there are no better recent examples of that adage than Groupon and Research in Motion.

From its IPO, including pre-IPO and post-IPO behaviors its been an embarrassment every way you can imagine. Embarrassment is one thing, but for those that purchased IPO day traded shares at $26, the drop below $15 is more meaningful.

In the past, I've been critical of Groupon and its juvenile leadership and arrogance. If you really care. take a look.

If you're really without a reason for living, I suppose that you could check through the Twitter archives and read other miscellaneous comments that I'd made over the months, especially about CEO Andrew Mason, although he certainly wasn't the only culprit.

During that time, I'd never own shares, nor had any interest, long or short in the shares of this company.

On Monday, I finally decided to take a position, by selling those April 2012 puts.

I did so following Groupon's press release regarding yet another accounting issue.

In the past, I've done very well selling puts on companies after they've taken big hits, but not being terribly speculative or risk taking by nature, those positions have always been small.

In this case, if I am assigned shares, I'll be on the hook for about 0.28% of my portfolio.

Since Monday, other than mentioning the fact that I had taken the position, I've made no comments, derogatory or laudatory, regarding Groupon.

Not as if I actually would influence anyone by doing so.

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Winsome Wednesdays

I spent a good part of the day in a medical facilty and its waiting room today. and I'm not quite certain how to describe the fare that was playing on the communal, but grossly undersized overhead television.

Obviously I'm spoiled by both content and context.

It certainly wasn't what I was used to watching during the day, as local news production values leave much to be desired.

Unless I'm mistaken or still in some drug induced recovery mode, I think that one of the correspondents adorned in a plaid blazer was named Herb Grunberg and he was accompanied by Brian Mulligan and Candy Drury.

Other than perhaps being a bit more hirsute and much less intelligible, I guess I could learn to like them, if I was destined to spend the rest of my life in a Bizarro universe.

But my stay here was to be a short one. Sugar Momma made me promise, though, not to divulge why I was here, but I am at liberty to disclose that my efforts to perfect an Erectile Dysfunction drug that allowed you to wait 8 hours before seeking urgent medical attention went awry.

Seems that the calculation should take into account the amount of time that it takes to get to the facility.

But despite the utter boredom of the day, it was a welcome change from what is typically "Winsome Wednesday" which for me represents the low point of the week in terms of trading activity and meaningfully relevant news stories.

Lest you think that I don't know the meaning of the word "winsome," let its use just be refelctive of the fact that I was too lazy and unimaginative today to come up with some other word for alliterative purposes.

Yet, when looking for a change of pace, maybe boring Wednesdays are my definition of "winsome."

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Wild, Wild West

I'm known neither for my sense of timing nor my sense of logic.

I still believe Sugar Momma's past contentions that my sperm must have been very slow swimming and her other assertion regarding her unusually short gestational period.

In the old "phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny" discussion, she is a prime example of our evolutionary link to the hamster.

Maybe it's "ontogeny recapitulates phylogent," but either way, the connection is clear. The scattered and partially digested carcasses of some of our offspring offer further testament.

My poor timing extends to most everything in life.

People always look back at their lives and question why they did or didn't do certain things at certain times of journey. Whether in romance or finance, those feelings are near universal and will typically lead you down a bad path if you don't resist the game and linger too long in its play.

The CNBC question of the day was "What would you have done differently if you could go back to 1998?"

Presumably they wanted some answer related to finance and they couldn't have been disappointed, as the predictable responses surrounding Apple and shorting the tech boom stocks were common responses.

The funny thing is that I didn't even conside rinvesting decisions when it came to that question. I'm so much more of a romantic than one who is so tightly focused on money.

If I could have gone back in time I would have taped all episodes of "Men Behaving Badly."

But I've moved on in life.

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